Everything in Between

Chapter Seventeen

Happy thursday noobs.

Chapter Seventeen 

“I’m sorry, but this is the way it all happened to work out. You have until the end of the day to clear away your things and if you have any questions, any at all, you can speak to my secretary, Janet, upstairs. Thank you.”

Everyone around me pushed in their chairs and began to leave. I did the same, feeling like a complete robot, and not properly thinking – just doing. As of three o’clock today, I was out of a job. There needed to be cuts throughout the company and fifteen of us just happened to be those unlucky few.

As I rode the elevator down to the lobby, a box filled with my desk items in my hands, I wondered if things were ever going to be the same again. It was raining outside, not much surprise there, and the bus ride home was just as dreary as everything else that had happened today.

I walked into my empty apartment, slamming the door behind me and tossing my keys on the counter. Zayn had helped me find a place a couple of days before they had left and I had yet to feel comfortable here. It was plain and boring and incredibly white. Speaking of which, I had promised Zayn I’d send him a Skype call later tonight.

So with just me, I got changed into comfier clothes and made myself a dinner for one. I ate in silence, just like how I’d been living in silence. The boys’ absence in my life had only been going on for about a week now but after practically living with them for two weeks, it seemed like a lifetime.

When eight p.m. rolled around, I turned on my dinosaur of a laptop, one that I’d have to return back to my office tomorrow, and got it loaded and running on the Skype application, waiting for Zayn to make the promised phone call.

"Happy Birthday, Cass!”

“Hey, Zayn,” I smiled at his grinning face. He seemed to be sitting on a bed, probably in his hotel room. “Thanks. How have you been?”

But instead of answering me like any normal person would, he cut straight to the chase. “He told me about you two,” he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“Oh, God, Zayn, don’t ever do that again!” I rubbed my face in my hands laughing. “What did he tell you?”

“Relax, will you? He didn’t say much, just that you two kissed and I interrupted.”

“It was more than a kiss,” I uttered under my breath, Zayn still hearing me.

“You what!? You snogged!? Oh my God, you did, didn’t you!? Liam, get in here! They snogged!”

“What!?” Less than ten seconds later Liam was by his side.

“Liam, where the hell did you come from?”

“Ignore her, Li, we have more important issues at hand. I can’t believe he never told us that!” 

I sighed, instantly regretting ever saying anything in the first place. Now Zayn would never let any of it go. “Look, it’s not even that big of deal! I don’t think we should dwell on it.”

“Oh, there will definitely be some serious dwelling.”

“You’re starting to sound like a girl.”

“That’s what I told him!” Liam’s face lit up with a grin until Zayn hit him across the stomach.

“Shut up, Payne.”

“Well, it looks like you two are busy, so if you could hand me off to the next boy that’d lovely.”

“Alright, alright, I will. And Liam says happy birthday, too. He’s just having trouble breathing and properly forming words at the moment.” Zayn got off whatever he was sitting on and began to carry me down a hallway.